


Leap Of Faith

by watanuki_sama



Series: Steeped In Sin [3]
Category: Common Law
Genre: Death, Demon!Wes AU, Gen, Introspection, It's dangerous to be loved by a demon, M/M, Resurrection, Violence, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The demon,” she says patiently. “You would die for him. Would he do the same for you?” Travis meets an angel and gets asked some things he doesn’t really know the answer to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leap Of Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Another piece of my Demon!Wes AU, which was inspired by the wonderful **allthatisbizarre** and **mizufallsfromkumo** on tumblr (the idea, not the fic). Thank you for letting me have this wonderful sandbox to play in!
> 
> Also posted on FF.net under the penname 'EFAW' on 07.15.15.

_“Sometimes, you have to take a leap of faith first. The trust part comes later.”_   
_—Father Leone, Man Of Steel_

\---

So the gun runners turn out to be a hoard of demons, but that’s not as big a deal as it might sound. They’re used to this sort of thing by now. It just means a change of tactics: everyone checks their anti-possession charms and uses rock salt shells and bullets with devil’s traps carved into the tips.

Then the angels show up and everything goes to hell.

It’s not that Travis doesn’t appreciate the angels showing up, because hey, they’re up against an entire gang of demons and that’s always a pain. But angels are so _single minded_ and _battle focused_ , and _that’s_ a nightmare, because they just go in without really assessing the situation, and it’s always stab first, ask questions later.

Which is really a bad way to work things when one of the good guys is also a demon.

As soon as Travis realizes what’s going on, as soon as he sees those silver blades flashing, he looks for his partner. Of course Wes is halfway across the warehouse, because he’s an immortal demon who doesn’t care one whit for his own personal safety. (Why should it bother him to get shot up a few times, when he’ll just heal from it? Travis has seen Wes fret more about holes in his suit than holes in his body.)

(And people say Travis is the reckless one.)

Wes is halfway across the warehouse, _alone_ , because he’s an asshole who thinks he’s invincible, and out of nowhere he’s surrounded by angels.

Travis starts running.

There’s no real thought there, nothing but the overriding panic in his brain because his partner is suddenly surrounded by hostiles and Travis isn’t there _why the hell isn’t Travis there_ —

Wes is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Travis knows this. Even when Wes is trapped in a devil’s trap and completely powerless, Wes can take care of himself.

But these are _angels_. Angels who don’t know Wes is the good guy here.

Angels who will probably kill his partner if he doesn’t get there in time.

A woman slides up behind Wes, arm thrust back. Wes whirls, blocks the blow, and then it’s a frantic flash of blades and bullets, and Travis puts on a burst of speed. Wes is good, but they’ve never gone up against angels before and Travis doesn’t want to know if Wes is _that_ good. Because if he’s not, then Travis is down a partner and that’s _not_ going to happen.

They say that when people are in traumatic situations, that sometimes time slows down. Travis has been in a lot of traumatic, near-death situations, and he’s never experienced that. Until now.

Time slows to molasses as Travis watches. The angel’s arm comes around, a downward thrust towards Wes’s chest, and Wes’s arms come up to block. But there’s no blade—it’s in the angel’s other hand, stabbing _upward_ , and Wes realizes it too late to even hope of getting his defense up in time.

And then Travis is there, moving through time that seems to stop, sliding into the space between Wes and the angel, between the demon and the blade.

He has a moment to think _This is a really stupid idea_ before time starts moving again. He sees a brief flash of surprise cross the angel’s face, and he hears Wes’s startled shout.

Then the blade is driven deep inside of him, up under his ribs and into his heart. There’s no flashing, no fire, because Travis isn’t a demon, he’s just a simple human. But even a human will die when they’ve been stabbed in vital organs.

The angel backs away, looking horrified, and Travis drops to his knees. He hears, dimly, a scream behind him, the sound of a man (not a man) who has let every pretense of sanity go because something precious has been stolen from him.

He feels, oddly, no pain. Shock, maybe, or an effect of the angel blade, or maybe that’s just a side-effect of being stabbed in general, who knows. No pain, except for the ache in his chest because Wes has been doing _so_ well, and who’s going to be willing to put up with his psycho demon partner now, keep him on the right side of the tenuous moral train tracks?

Travis looks down at himself, at the silver blade sticking out of his chest, and he thinks _This was stupid_. But then he thinks _I’m glad I did it_ and _Wes isn’t dead_.

Travis thinks _It’s worth it_ , and then he dies.

\---

Travis opens his eyes to white. A plain, endless whiteness, with nothing inside it, no depth or color or shape, and it makes him a little dizzy. He frowns, looking down at himself, at the distinct lack of holes or blood or pain.

Then he looks at the empty expanse of whiteness again.

He groans. “Aw, hell.”

“Actually,” a voice says from behind, “this is Heaven.”

He whirls. There, standing on nothing in the whiteness (Travis ignores the fact that he is also standing on nothing because that would freak him out too much) is an angel.

More specifically, _the_ angel. The one that killed him.

Travis narrows his eyes. “Why are you here?”

The angel nods gently, apologetically. “I did not mean to kill you,” she says simply, sounding sincere enough. “You jumped in front of my blade.”

“Well, duh, you were gonna shish kebob my partner.” Travis looks around the whiteness like he can find a way out of here. “Gotta say, Heaven is sort of dull. Haven’t you guys heard of interior decorators?”

The angel blinks. “You are not in Heaven proper. This is a…way station between realms.” She folds her hands in front of her and resumes staring at him. “I am Eae, one who thwarts demons.”

“Yeah? Cool. I’m Travis. I’m, uh, also one who thwarts demons. Sort of.” He jams his hands in his pockets, looking around again. “Way station, huh? What’s that mean, my fate’s still being decided? Where to stick Travis, up or down?” He pauses, then brightens. “Or does this mean you’re here to take me back? Because that would be awesome, and Wes is gonna be _pissed_ if I end up staying dead, just saying.”

_Pissed_ is not the right word for what he suspects Wes will be feeling about this situation, but Travis’s default is to make light of serious situations, and being dead doesn’t really change that.

The angel tilts her head to the side, blinking more out of curiosity than an actual need to blink. “Wes. You refer to the demon.”

“Yeah. Wes, my partner.” Travis makes a motion with his head. “And he’s got a bit of a short fuse, so if we could hurry this along, right…”

“You died for the demon,” she states in a voice that implies _I don’t understand this and we’re not leaving here until I do_. “Why?”

“Because he’s my _partner_ ,” Travis growls, eyes roaming the empty whiteness like maybe he’ll find his own escape out of here. “That’s what partners _do_. _Of course_ I’m gonna stop someone from hurting him, even if it costs me my own life.” She continues to stare at him, and he shifts awkwardly. “Haven’t you ever had a partner before?”

“Not that like,” she replies simply. “I have had brethren, but none like you describe.” She blinks, tilts her head the other way. “Would the demon do the same for you?”

Now it’s Travis’s turn to blink in confusion. “Uh…what?”

“The demon,” she says patiently. “You would die for him. Would he do the same for you?”

“On a good day? Sure,” Travis jokes. Always fall to the default when in doubt. “On a bad day, he might just let me die out of spite. It depends on his mood, you know.” He chuckles, but the laughter dies when her face doesn’t change a single bit.

Right. Angel. Not known for their sense of humor.

She repeats the question like he never spoke. “Would he do the same for you?”

Travis’s first instinct is to tell her to piss off, it’s really none of her business. He bites his tongue. Seeing as how he’s stuck in a way station between life and Heaven, he doesn’t really want to tick off his one possible chance at getting out of here.

His second instinct is to say _Yes, of course he would, how could you even think that?_ Wes does care, in his own little twisted way. It’s not sane or rational and it’s extremely possessive. It’s…well, it’s a demon trying to care about a human, in a human manner. It doesn’t always work, but Wes tries.

Would Wes leap in front of a bullet for Travis? Well, sure, bullets don’t do anything to him, why the hell not? If Travis could take a few bullets without getting hurt, he’d be a lot more reckless and foolhardy too.

But if it were like today, an angel blade or something else that could kill him _permanently_ , would Wes…?

“I…,” Travis swallows, trying to think it through, and the only answer he can come up with is _I don’t know_. He _wants_ to believe Wes would do the same for him, wants to believe it’s a two-way street. Wes _does_ care, in his own twisted way. But first and foremost, he’s a demon, and Travis has never met a demon who puts someone else’s safety above their own. Who would _die_ for someone else.

Wes cares, but does he care _that much?_ Travis wants to believe it, but the truth of the matter is, he just doesn’t know.

Slowly, he admits, “I hope he would. But I don’t know.”

The angel tilts her head, blinks big blue eyes at him. “But you would still die for him?” There’s confusion lining every word of her query—and it pisses Travis off, because this is such a simple matter and she’s trying to make it complicated.

“Of course I would.” He crosses his arms and resists the urge to pace on this endless white expanse. “It’s not a give-and-take relationship. It doesn’t matter what _he_ would do, it matters what _I_ would do. Would I die for him? _Clearly_. Would he? I don’t know. But _that doesn’t matter_.”

“You care for the demon,” Eae says, with just a hint of a question at the end of the words.

Travis spreads his hands, a gesture that says _Obviously, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?_

“You trust the demon,” the angel murmurs, and this time there’s no question, just a flat declaration. But there’s something a little awed in her voice, like she’s seen all the wonders in the world but _this_ is something completely foreign to her.

There’s no hesitation in his words when he says, “Yeah, I do.” It took a bit of time to warm up to Wes, but Travis _does_ trust his partner, absolutely. And that, at least, goes both ways—Travis doesn’t know if Wes would die for him, but Travis has seen Wes hurt and vulnerable, and he’s carried Wes out of more than one devil’s traps. That’s enough. It’s just what partners _do_ , it’s nothing special.

Except, judging by the look on Eae’s face, that is something very special indeed.

Before he can ask, those big blue eyes blink at him again, and slowly, a gentle smile crosses her face, warm and infinitely fond. “I see why you are so favored,” she breathes, and Travis really has no idea what that means, but she sounds satisfied, like maybe she’s found the answer she was looking for.

Which hopefully means this little Q&A session is over and she’s sending him back.

“Does that mean we’re good? ‘Cause I’ve got a pissed off demon to go pacify, so if we could get this show on the road…” 

She smiles again. “You are interesting, Travis Marks,” she says, reaching out. “I look forward to seeing you again.”

Travis has no idea what _that_ means, but before he can question it, she touches his forehead, and everything goes dark.

\---

Travis wakes with a gasp on the floor of the warehouse, and he can hear screaming. Not himself, he’s totally fine. In fact, he finds as he runs his hands over his body, he’s better than fine. All gaping wounds have been healed. _All_ his wounds have been healed, including the bruises from last week’s scuffle and the papercut he got yesterday. Apparently being brought back from the dead by an angel includes an all-expenses-paid pass to a perfectly fine body. Cool.

No. He’s fine.

The person screaming is Wes.

It’s not a human sound. It’s a sound of pain, the sound of someone who’s been tortured and tormented for eons and was given relief, only to have it snatched away again. It’s pain and agony and sorrow, masked by wrath, and it is endless.

Wes is screaming, and Hell is in his voice.

There are words in the agonized howl. Nothing Travis can make out; it’s not a language he knows. These words are harsh and empty, and they cut like razors and twist in his eardrums. Travis winces, slowly sitting up and taking stock of the situation.

The fighting has stopped. All the demons are dead or fled, and paramedics tend to the few people that are still alive. The cops and angels are all standing in a loose circle. The cops have their guns out, and only about half the angels have put away their blades. Someone hastily scratched a devil’s trap in the floor of the warehouse and tossed Wes inside. 

Wes looks like hell. He’s been shot, like, three times, and Travis is guessing they were devil’s-trap bullets because one of the demon’s legs doesn’t seem to be working right. Not that he’s paying any attention—he’s right up against the edge of the barrier, screaming and glaring at the angel, not even noticing the damage he’s doing to himself.

The angel, Eae, simply stands there, right outside the devil’s trap, her hands folded serenely in front of her and a look on her face that could be, in the right circumstances, classified as mildly regretful. Travis didn’t know angels could go for regretful, but he supposes killing normal vanilla humans would probably qualify.

Wes doesn’t notice Travis, every single iota of his attention fixated on the angel, and Travis has no doubt if he wasn’t confined he would do his very best to rip her to pieces until he could sink his claws into her Grace and shred her to pieces. He would be destroyed in the process, but Travis doesn’t think that would stop him.

It’s terrifying. Travis thought he’d seen Wes lose control before, moments when he got a little too trigger-happy or a little too overzealous, when the demonic side of him rose to the surface and his eyes went black and the grin on his face went feral and sharp.

Travis thought he’d seen Wes lose control before, but he was so, so wrong. _This_ is Wes losing control, _this_ is what happens when Wes holds nothing back, and it’s terrifying enough that Travis feels his bones wobble a little, a primal instinct telling him to run run _run never look back!_ If this is what Wes has been holding back, all this time, then he has more self-control than anyone has ever given him credit for.

And this is all happening because Travis was accidentally killed, in a room full of angels and policemen with anti-demon gear. He doesn’t even want to think about what would happen if Travis died because of some random murderer and there was nothing to hold Wes back.

Someday Travis is going to die no matter what Wes does and Wes will be all alone and Travis can’t even begin to contemplate that right now, it’s too much and he needs to focus on the here and now.

His partner is in pain, and Travis needs to help him.

He rises to his feet. A couple of people notice, some of the angels and a few cops who go wide-eyed and startled. Travis ignores them, stepping towards the circle.

“Wes?” he called softly, not even trying to shout over the demon’s noise. If Wes is listening, then he’ll hear.

And hear he does, because he goes silent, and the entire room is quiet as a graveyard. Travis can hear his blood pulsing in his ears, can feel the tension thrumming in the air.

He takes another step forward. “Wes.”

Wes turns to him, and Travis flinches. Wes is wearing his human skin, but there is nothing human about him, and it has nothing to do with his black eyes. Sometimes Travis forgets. When Wes grumps about his suits or makes snide comments about Travis’s food choices, it’s so _easy_ to forget that Wes is just playing at being human. He’s not even close.

This, too, is terrifying in its own way. This is because of _Travis_ , and that Travis can have such influence over someone else…

(He never wanted this. But he can’t take it back now.)

He swallows and moves right up to the edge of the circle, kneeling on the outside of the boundary. Wes’s gaze follows him every inch of the way, and Travis looks for any expression he recognizes, anything he can understand in that inhuman masque.

“Wes, buddy,” he murmurs, all too aware of their audience. It’s not important right now. “You’re making a scene. You gotta calm down.”

The demon snarls, and it’s loud in the deafening silence. There are no words Travis recognizes, but the vehemence is too clear, and he claws the air in front of him, the devil’s trap keeping him from going any further. Travis can all too easily guess what he’s saying.

_She killed you, so I’m going to kill her._

“Wes.” Travis takes a risk, reaches over the devil’s trap to wrap his hands around Wes’s wrists. _He’s_ not the one blocked by the trap, and as horribly frightening as Wes is being right now, Travis has every faith that Wes won’t hurt him. He might be the only one Wes _won’t_ hurt, in this state.

“Wes, I’m okay. I’m okay now.”

Long fingers clamp around his wrists, sharp nails digging into skin, and with a hard yank Travis is pulled into the circle. There are alarmed shouts from beyond, and Travis can imagine every officer aiming their weapon, wondering if they should shoot.

But Wes doesn’t attack him. Wes clutches at him, buries his head against Travis’s shoulder, and makes this awful keening noise, high and endless because Wes doesn’t need to breathe. It’s distressingly intimate, and Travis rather wishes this entire thing _weren’t_ happening in the middle of a warehouse surrounded by coworkers, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

There’s a flap of wings, and Travis sees the angels in his view vanish into thin air. He twists awkwardly, peering over his shoulder, and Eae stands there, her blue eyes sharp in her thin face. She gives him a small smile when she sees him looking, something sympathetic and maybe a little pitying, and inclines her head. Then she, too, is gone in a rustle of feathers.

_I see why you are so favored_ , she’d said in that blank expanse of nothing between worlds, and Travis feels a shiver run down his spine.

It’s terrifying, being the reason a demon loses control.

\---

After, when the devil’s trap is scratched out and Jonelle has dug the bullets out of Wes’s skin, after the captain takes one look at the both of them—Travis with a bloody hole in his shirt and Wes hovering much too close at his shoulder, eyes blacker than midnight—after all that, Wes follows him home.

Travis isn’t surprised, really. Not after what happened at the warehouse. So he just lets Wes in and tells himself this had better be done with by tomorrow, because all this mother henning is going to get old fast and what the _hell_ does Wes think he’s doing?

“What the _hell_ are you doing?”

Wes, who has already stripped Travis of his jacket and is reaching for the hem of his shirt, doesn’t pause. “She killed you, Travis.”

Travis tries to twist away, batting at Wes’s hands. “Dude, I’m fine!”

“She _killed you_ , Travis!” It’s an anguished snarl, much too reminiscent of the warehouse, and Travis’s throat tightens. “You were _dead!_ ”

Oh. _Oh_. That’s…sure, Travis knew he’d been dead, and he knew it had affected Wes, but he was brought back and then he had to really just worry about making sure Wes chilled a little, so he didn’t really think about what that _meant_.

He’d been _dead_ , and Wes witnessed it.

_I see why you are so favored_ , she’d said, and Travis wonders if this is what a demon’s love looks like.

“Okay.” He drops his hands, gives in. “Sorry. I didn’t realize…”

“No you did _not_ , because you are an _idiot_.” It’s practically normal, Wes’s grumping, except for the way he yanks Travis’s shirt over his head, the way he runs his hands over Travis’s chest, checking for holes that aren’t there. Not even a scar, ‘cause when an angel fixes you up, they do it right.

“See?” Travis jokes weakly. “Good as new.”

“I’ll kill her,” Wes promises, low and upset. “The next time I see her, I’ll rip her apart.”

Travis winces. “I really wish you wouldn’t.”

“She _killed you!_ ”

“She also brought me back.” It’s never a good day when Travis is being the reasonable one. Then again, Travis died, so…actually, he can’t decide if that gives him more of an excuse or less. “So really, I think everything evens out in the end.”

Wes harrumphs and pushes away, pacing the room with his arms crossed. This is his disgruntled look. That’s good. Disgruntled is about three steps down from frantic hovering. Travis will take it.

He picks up his ruined shirt from the floor, wiggling his fingers through the neat hole in the chest. There’s blood around the edge of the tear, and it’s funny, looking at it, because Travis feels so _detached_ from the mess, like it’s not his blood at all. He was _dead_ , and this bloody, ripped shirt is the only proof of it, but it almost feels like a dream.

“Would you die for me, Wes?”

The demon pauses, staring at him. It’s more than a little unsettling, having that void of a gaze aimed at him, and Travis has practice staring Wes down but after today he’s just not up for it. He’s the one who looks away first.

“It was something she asked me, when I was dead.” He folds the shirt, sloppy and imprecise, the ruined front turned inward. “I didn’t know the answer.”

The weight of Wes’s stare is a heavy, tangible thing, and Travis can feel it boring through the top of his skull. He wonders if Wes can sense the confliction inside of him, the hope warring with the pained thought that Wes just wouldn’t be that selfless, even for him. He _wants_ to believe, they’re partners, that’s what they do, but Wes is a _demon_. Self-sacrifice isn’t something they really go for.

Wes is doesn’t follow the standard demonic mold, that’s for sure. But is that enough?

The demon takes a step toward him, fingers twitching like maybe he wants to reach out. “Travis,” he says, low and urgent, a deadly promise in every syllable, “Travis, I would burn the world for you.”

Travis smiles weakly. “Yeah, but would you die for me?”

Wes just stares at him with those bottomless eyes and doesn’t answer, and a chill runs down Travis’s spine.

\---

**CODA:**

It’s years before Wes snaps, apropos of nothing, “Yes, I would die for you, but that’s a stupid way to go so try not to be put in that sort of situation. Do you have those logs from the call company yet?” 

Travis, who has all but forgotten that conversation and needs several hints and a few minutes to think back before he has even the slightest idea what Wes is talking about, can only gape for a minute before he says, “I’ll try,” and then, a little more quietly as he hands over the phone logs, “Thanks.”

**Author's Note:**

> Eae’s name came from a list from that I found through google. URL is below.  
> http://www.angelsghosts.com/angel_names


End file.
